Pinery Christmas Trees offers range of tree types at six retail locations throughout San Diego County

With the aroma of Thanksgiving dinner barely gone, already customers were perusing the early selection of trees on display Sunday at Pinery Christmas Trees, a local tree lot across from the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

Owner Mike Osbourne has been in the Christmas tree business since he was 14. His company has six retail locations in San Diego County, including one in Escondido, and also supplies other independent tree lots in the area, purchasing about 30,000 trees each season from Oregon and Washington. “We carry it all,” Osbourne said. “Different types of trees — Noble firs, Douglas firs, Nordmans, Frasiers and Grands. We have little baby trees, poinsettias, wreaths, the whole nine yards.”

Pinery Christmas Trees shares its roots with The Pinery, a separately owned tree farm on Highland Valley Road in Escondido that is one of the largest growers of living Christmas trees in the country.

At Osbourne’s tree lots, prices range from $30 to more than $100, depending on size and style. In an age when independent tree lots are in competition with big box locations — the Targets and the Home Depots — he said quality and service are key.

“Our trees are thicker and fuller,” he said. “And our service is really key.”

Allan Boxler, owner of Scripps Ranch Christmas Trees on Scripps Poway Parkway, has been selling Christmas trees for 22 years. Christmas tree buying, he said, is about the experience.

“You can buy a Christmas tree anywhere,” he said. “But when you come to a lot like this, you get the full experience. It’s an atmosphere that you just can’t get anywhere else.”

Osbourne said a lot of work goes into a tree before it becomes a holiday fixture in your living room.

All Pinery trees are hand shaped for years, before being shipped to a local lot. Owners like Osbourne will travel to tree farms to look through thousands of firs, handpicking the best ones. To avoid broken branches, firs are airlifted, by helicopter, to loading trucks where they are bundled in a protective net and loosely stacked in a truck. Each tree is unloaded by hand.

“It takes years of time, care and effort,” he said. “Most people have no idea.”

For many customers, Christmas tree picking is serious business. Felicia Ortiz, a 25-year-old Carmel Valley resident who is favoring a Noble fir this season, lists some of her most important criteria.

“Balance, you don’t want it lopsided. Holes,” or lack thereof, she shares.

Joel Carlson, Felicia’s boyfriend, said he only sees real trees in their future.

With all the convenience of artificial trees, it seems one characteristic pushes people to make the purchase every year.